


The Seasons After Ashes

by gingerlegend



Series: My UDAD continuations [2]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band), Ulysses Dies at Dawn - The Mechanisms (Album)
Genre: Angst, transmasc persephone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28983102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerlegend/pseuds/gingerlegend
Summary: Following the Ulysses incident, Hades left the City, setting a portion of the Acheron aflame. And then the flames were extinguished, and a fellow going by the name Persephone had taken their place.Chapter one takes place before the Tragedy of Eros and Psyche, but the rest take place later on.
Series: My UDAD continuations [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2122896
Kudos: 3





	1. Phlegathon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place before The Tragedy of Eros and Psyche.

Hades was gone, left for unknown reasons, to unknown places, with a strange crew of pirates.  
The legacy they left, however, was chaos. They set the Acheron aflame, and a great many minds were finally given a release from their servitude.  
But the flames stopped almost as quickly as they started, and none knew why.

The Olympian named Demeter had her suspicions, but any enthusiasm and warmth was long gone from her once cheerful facade. She didn't pretend she had supplies enough to feed the starving anymore. She did the opposite now, openly refusing all requests for a morsel of the abundance the Olympians hoarded.  
Demeter decided it was worth investing, and wore a cloak while searching for the answer. Her daughter, a girl named Kore, who had run away recently.  
She didn't know, of course, that her daughter had gotten assistance in disposing of the body she was once confined to. Kore was now known only as Persephone, and he wanted nothing to do with the woman he'd once called his mother.  
Demeter knew that her Kore was one of the few people who had been trained for emergency situations, and also had an interest in the Acheron.

As Demeter approached a figure in the strange top hat, she spoke softly, hoping to disguise her voice. She didn't want anyone knowing about her suspicions until she was certain.  
"You… you are not that Hades fellow, are you?"  
Persephone recognized his mother's voice, poorly disguised from him, as her constantly disapproval echoed in his mind from time to time.  
He shook his head, answering her questions. She couldn't possibly recognize him, not with this new body, not without a voice to draw the connection. He was confident in this.  
"Your name, then, good… erm, sir?"  
Persephone smiled and gestured to a plaque he had hired a young builder to create, in return for any inconsequential mind.

He didn't care why the lad wanted it. He didn't care that the lad wanted to turn a Somnambulist sentient. That was the young man's business alone. All Persephone required was the plaque, and a signature, for personal records. He kept the name Pygmalion in a folder dedicated to all his ridiculous deals, and kept note of the mind he'd been asked to release: that of a man named Galatea. But this was not Persephone's story, and so he did not think about it in his encounter with Demeter.

"Persephone," Demeter murmured. "Odd name."  
Persephone shrugged. He didn't need her approval, but the comment still stung a little.  
"What happened after Hades vanished?"  
Persephone put one finger to his lips. He wasn't planning on telling.  
"Might I bargain for the answer? Perhaps there is a mind or two that can tell me."  
Persephone quickly came up with an idea. He had risked a _lot_ in saving the Acheron from the flames, and he was low on supplies after that.  
He had already set a certain portion of the Acheron aside for any charred brains that still functioned, marked with a plaque labeled "Phlegathon."  
He motioned for his mother to follow him, and follow him she did. She saw the ashes of minds that were lost amidst the ones that Persephone had managed to save.  
Persephone typed up an agreement.  
_You will provide me with any supplies I require. I will give you access to the Phlegathon for three months each year._  
"Six months, no less."  
_That is acceptable, Madame Demeter._  
Demeter's face twisted into a frown, unpleasantly surprised at being recognized. "Clever one, aren't you?"  
Persephone shrugged, then nodded. He had no reason to be humble. She didn't know who he was, after all. And she wasn't in a position to demand his humility regardless.  
"Do not tell anyone about this arrangement," Demeter said.  
Persephone held a finger to his lips. He wouldn't be talking anyway.

Persephone kept records of which minds Demeter accessed. He knew she wouldn't find anything useful without piecing together a massive amount of fragmented information, and it was unlikely that she'd finish within six months. Which meant she couldn't change her mind and stop providing supplies.  
Demeter picked up on Persephone's distrust, but she didn't care. She wasn't in a rush. It wasn't like many others were trying to figure out what happened after Hades left.  
She gathered what data she could over the following months, and then she waited.


	2. Adonis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite pays a visit to the Acheron, for reasons unrelated to the deal Eros made earlier that week. This chapter takes place after my Eros and Psyche fic, so if you haven't read that, it'd be a good idea to do so first.

Mere days after Persephone made his deal with Eros, Aphrodite herself paid a visit to the Acheron.  
"Greetings, Persephone, might I ask you something?"  
Persephone nodded, mostly just to acknowledge Aphrodite's presence. He got the feeling that Aphrodite might try to negotiate her side of the bargain, but she would not talk his price down easily.  
"Oh, don't be so dismissive, darling, I do not intend to negotiate the terms you agreed to, I merely want to add an additional exchange."  
Persephone raised his eyebrows. What might Aphrodite want from him? This was intriguing.  
"A certain man died last week, and I was so busy with my child's infatuation with Psyche that I hadn't the opportunity to come down here sooner. Could you possibly locate the mind of Adonis for me, dear? He had… a debt with me, I'm afraid, and I must collect.  
This was a problem. Adonis had helped Persephone find a doctor to secretly work on his cerebral transfer from the body of Kore. Persephone had promised to keep him out of the Acheron. Adonis had been unwilling to explain his reasoning. When the man's body was found, half-dissolved in a pool of muriatic acid, Persephone poured the acid over the rest of his mind.  
Persephone shrugged and typed up a lie.  
 _His mind was never brought to me. Perhaps he is not dead after all.  
_ Aphrodite pursed her lips. "I'll be back soon. Don't forget that I can stop the payments without consequence."

Persephone removed his top hat and closed up for the night. He had no idea what Aphrodite was up to, but there wasn't much she could do to him except stiff him. No one was eager to learn to operate the Acheron, so killing Persephone would cause more problems than the blaze Hades had left behind.  
Adonis, it turned out, owed Aphrodite a favor. She had intended to cash in sooner, but was preoccupied with Eros and Psyche. Adonis owed her, and she wasn't the type to let go of a debt.  
Persephone was at a loss, but he retired to the makeshift bedroom he'd set up in one of the few empty rooms of the Acheron. He rested, as he needed to stay alert tomorrow.

Aphrodite showed up the next day, as expected.  
"I know you were acquainted with Adonis. I've gathered affidavits from several people who saw him enter and exit the Acheron over the past several months, though he was always quite stealthy," she said. "It strikes me as rather convenient that his mind in particular should have been destroyed so thoroughly, when none others had managed it before him."  
Persephone didn't bother to respond.  
"You're oddly loyal to someone like him. You do know what he did for a living, don't you?"  
Persephone nodded. He knew about Adonis's talent for cerebral transfers more directly than most others could claim.  
"He was a biomechanical engineer. He is the reason the Sphinx virus was able to spread so quickly. I would know. I worked closely with him, providing him with young test subjects to infect."  
It was a horrible thing to say, but Persephone believed it. He knew Adonis had something of a dark past, before he started to work on perfecting cerebral transfers. Persephone couldn't bring himself to care about Adonis's former job. It wasn't why he'd helped Adonis reach a true death, free from the Acheron's clutches. He wasn't loyal. He just didn't break his promises.  
He typed up a response.  
 _I don't care what he did. Our relationship was business, nothing more.  
_ Aphrodite narrowed her eyes. "I will remember this, Persephone."  
She turned around and left.  
 _Good riddance,_ Persephone thought to himself.


	3. Eleusis

Another Olympian visited only a week later, but Persephone wasn't concerned this time.  
"Persephone, it's good to see you," said Hecate.  
Hecate had been instrumental in Persephone's escape from Olympus. She was one of the most reliable bodyguards of all the Olympians. Not the best nor the strongest, just the one who Demeter trusted. How could Demeter have known that the reason she was so loyal was because of her friendship with young Kore?  
"Knowing you, you've been worried about me, but I'm doing fine. Demeter suspects nothing of my involvement in your disappearance."  
Persephone smiled. He had indeed been worried about that.  
"Have you ever tried Lotus?" Hecate asked, confusing him with the change of topic.  
He shook his head. He didn't like the idea of the hallucinations the drug led to.  
"I've developed a taste for it, regrettably," Hecate admitted. "From what I've heard, the things it makes you see… well, it shows you the future."  
Persephone had heard that theory, back when old lady Cass claimed to have predicted the outcome of the Ilium War. No one had been surprised that the City would win, so she was something of a joke.  
"I don't know if I believe it myself, if I'm being honest, but it's a pretty interesting escape from reality."  
Persephone shook his head. It wasn't a worthwhile pastime in his eyes.  
"Well, I came to warn you about something I saw, from the lotus. Not sure if it'll happen, but better safe than sorry."  
Persephone lifted a hand, gesturing for his old friend to continue.  
"I, erm… saw a woman leaving a house. Not sure who she was, as her features were hazy, but… she was carrying a box— wait, no. Not just a box. Something that looked like a box, but was actually more than that. Probably a computer, or something like that."  
Hecate closed her eyes, trying to remember. Persephone tapped her on the shoulder.  
"Sorry, sorry. Er, anyway… she brought the box out from the house of that one hacker fellow— you know the one. Hero of Ilium or whatever."  
Persephone nodded. He remembered Prometheus.  
"She… did something with the box… opened it and pressed something… and I couldn't tell what happened really, but it fucked up the City bad."  
Persephone frowned and waited for an explanation.  
"You of all people know how all the power in the City is connected to the Acheron," Hecate said. "Whatever the woman did… whatever she _will_ do… it must be a virus that infects the Acheron. The rest of the vision was… flashes of chaos. Power outages, somnambulists going haywire, food supplies covered in rust. And then I saw you, frantically trying to debug the Acheron. So I knew I had to tell you about what I saw."  
Persephone nodded slowly. He wasn't sure he believed it, but he didn't doubt that Hecate believed it.  
"Would it be alright if I talk to Teiresias? He's more equipped to solve this mystery than I am."  
Persephone nodded again.  
"I'll return again soon, my friend. I missed you more than I realized."

For the next few days, Persephone spent countless hours updating passwords and reinforcing security measures. He needed a better security system, and he needed it as soon as possible.  
He contacted Hestia, an Olympian known for her prowess at writing firewalls. It was her code that had nearly stopped Ilium's ability to retaliate before the hacker Prometheus had cracked it. She was a master at security, and Persephone was confident that she would be able to write a code to protect the Acheron.  
Hestia's reply came quickly. She agreed to write the code, naming a price that was far lower than Persephone had expected. Within a month, he received the anti-virus program: the Hearth of Eleusis.


	4. Pandora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A flashback, followed by a cruel gift to all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ashes, as Hades, shows up in the flashback sequence. Hopefully I represented them decently.

Three years passed. Demeter spent several months a year combing through the data, getting nowhere. Not that it mattered. There was no point in her search. Hades was long gone, and the Acheron survived the blaze of glory they'd left behind them.

_Persephone had actually met Hades before that. He had come down here back before his cerebral transfer, back when he still resembled Kore. Persephone had snuck into Hades's home and spied on them. After a week, he realized Hades hadn't been oblivious to his presence at all. They'd noticed him immediately, but they let him stick around. Perhaps they were charmed by how brazen he was._   
_"Let me stay here awhile," Persephone had begged the boss of this criminal underworld. "I can't go back home."_   
_Hades had regarded him. "You've been watching, right? Try to work the Acheron for the day. I'll decide your fate tomorrow."_   
_Luckily for Persephone, memorization was always easy for him. He didn't know everything that working the Acheron required, but he managed._   
_"Your mind would be wasted in the Acheron. You're just too interesting. A real wild card. Probably a bad move on my part, and yet, hm…"_   
_"So I can stay?"_   
_"More than that. If you're willing to work for me, you'll have better job security than anyone in the City's history."_   
_Persephone had sighed in relief._   
_"I'll keep your existence secret from Olympus, and you'll ease my workload."_   
_"One thing… I can't be seen looking like…"_   
_"I see. I'll pay for your cerebral transfer, if that's all you're worried about. Now, let's talk names. You'll have to come up with one of those, kid."_

_Hades mentored him for only a few months before setting up the Ulysses job. Persephone didn't get to meet anyone involved in it, and only hours after the Ulysses incident, Hades set fire to the Acheron, and they left Persephone in the inferno. They probably didn't expect him to be quick enough to extinguish the flames, but he was faster than Hades had realized._

But that was a long time ago. Now, Persephone worked in silence. He knew all he needed to know about running the Acheron. He was confident that, in the case of an emergency, the Hearth of Eleusis would hold up long enough for him to code his way through any virus.  
Three years ago, when he had hired Hestia to create the anti-virus, he hadn't been so certain of himself, but the Hearth of Eleusis allowed him to relax.

As time passed, Hecate's visits became more frequent. She didn't look well.  
"The Hearth of Eleusis seems secure, right?" she often asked. Persephone would nod, and they'd both be silent for a while.

One day, Persephone noticed something disastrous. The Hearth of Eleusis was gone. Somehow, it had been uninstalled. Panicked, he began a virus scan.  
He didn't find anything. No, that wasn't exactly true. He found something. It was an absence. The entirety of the Styx's network was disconnected. He did another scan, and realized that the Acheron was shutting itself down.  
"Persephone!" a voice shouted. Hecate stood in the doorway, panting. "I saw her! The girl from my lotus dreams!"  
Persephone had almost forgotten about that.  
"She's calling herself Despoina," Hecate said. "Half the City has lost power, and Olympus is getting the worst of it."  
Sure, the Olympians deserved it, but it was still worrying.  
"Turn on a news station. Eros is making a statement."  
Persephone nodded, and put the City's news up on his monitor.

"—but we'll make it through. We've got some of the best programmers working on it, and we've sent a representative to alert the Acheron of the emergency, although Mr. Persephone is likely already working on things."  
Eros's smile was flawless. Persephone knew some of what Eros was going through. Hell, he could relate to their situation to an extent. Still, Eros was twice as charming as their mother ever was.  
But then their confident facade faltered. "I just got a message from my mother. Um, it seems that somnambulists are shorting out now. That shouldn't be… aren't they separate from the City's network?"  
"Um, w-we'll be right back. Stay c-calm, everyone." Their face had gone pale. "What do you _mean_ her body isn't working?! A rebodied mind shouldn't have network issues, Hermes. She can't leave me all on my—"

And the footage cut out. It was hard to tell if it was because of whatever Despoina did or if it was because the Olympians couldn't let people see Eros breaking down on air.  
Hecate took a shaky breath. "Cerebral transfers aren't that different from rebodying. Are you going to be okay, Persephone?"  
Persephone knew the answer: he wouldn't be okay.  
"It could have been an EMP," Hecate mumbled to herself. "A virus wouldn't take anything offline the way this has, so…"  
Persephone felt pain shoot through his body. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, but he didn't remember falling.  
"Are you alright?" Hecate asked, knowing the answer already.  
He smiled, but Hecate saw the pain in his eyes as she helped him stand back up. Still, he reached a shaky hand for his keyboard, carefully typing.  
Hecate read what he typed aloud. "'Stop Despoina. If City dies, make sure she does too.'"  
Dark spots appeared in Persephone's vision as the pain became too much.  
"Are you serious, Persephone?!" Hecate shouted, her voice raw. "You can't give up! You can't just…"  
Persephone didn't feel the teardrops fall onto him. The only sensation he had now was pain. If he had a voice, he'd surely be screaming.  
"I'm sorry," Hecate said. "I know you. If you could still move, you wouldn't give up. I promise I'll stop her from… whatever she intends to do next."  
Persephone lost consciousness. He was dying. He was dying, and there was nothing after death without the Acheron. Could oblivion really be better?

Meanwhile, Hecate went searching for Despoina. She had an inkling of where her destination might've been. She headed to the house she'd seen in the lotus dream… into the house once belonging to Prometheus.  
If she was right about this, she'd be able to carry out Persephone's last wish. If she was wrong, it was unlikely she'd ever find her target. But she couldn't think about that. She had to hold onto hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet you didn't expect me to kill off Persephone so soon. Honestly, I originally imagined this going way differently, but as I wrote this chapter, I felt like this was the only way things could go.  
> I'm not sure whether any of this situation would make sense. I don't know shit about what an EMP does. Also, I kind of regret how I tried to force the term Eleusis into the story, since it... literally doesn't end up making any difference. At least I came up with an interpretation of Hestia that I'm proud of, so that's a consolation I guess. It felt necessary to make a reference to the Eleusian Mysteries tho, so I'm glad I did.


	5. Epimetheus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hecate is the City's only hope, but can she protect it?

Hecate broke into the house formerly inhabited by Prometheus, and inside she found a man she didn't know.  
"Oh, hello," the man said, almost cheerfully. "If you're here to steal food, go ahead. It's not really my house anyway."  
Hecate stared at him.  
"What? It's not like my brother's using it anymore. Feel free to take whatever you want. I might regret it later, if I somehow survive the night, but hey. Not like the potential for regret has stopped me before."  
Hecate collected herself. "You're Prometheus's brother?"  
"Yeah. Not that we've spoken since he became a hacker or whatever. The fool probably thought he'd be protecting me by cutting ties, but… whatever, you know?"  
Hecate didn't know, but she didn't care. "Did you even notice what's been happening for the last couple hours?"  
"Oh, the crisis thing? I don't really care. Not like the City doesn't deserve damnation."  
"Listen—"  
"No, no. _You_ listen. If— no, _when_ the City falls… _Good riddance_. To all the thieves, and all the stifled fools like me… Good riddance to all of it."  
Hecate frowned. "Do you know who that Despoina woman is?"  
"Name doesn't ring a bell," the man said.  
"Are you sure?"  
"Maybe my wife knows her," he said, turning around. Then he called out to someone deeper in the house. "Dora! Could you come down here?"  
The man smiled at Hecate, but without any of the humor he'd had before. "I lied. She's all yours, Dora."  
Hecate felt something press against her back. Someone was holding a gun to her back.  
"Thanks for buying me some time, sweetie," a voice said. Hecate couldn't place the woman's accent. She over-pronounced her words, speaking with an odd cadence.  
"Why are you doing this?" Hecate asked.  
"It's my gift to all the bastards running this place," said Despoina. Or Dora. Or whatever her real name was. "Seeing those pieces of shit age to oblivion was cathartic."  
"What do you—" Hecate's words were cut off by a sudden jab from the gun, its barrel being pushed toward her.  
"The Sphinx. I found samples of it in an abandoned laboratory. Replaced the Olympian's Eternity with it, and contaminated the food supplies."  
"That's—"  
"It's well-deserved. Everyone in this fucking City is complicit in one crime or another, so I thought why not fight cruelty with cruelty."  
"I may not know much about hacking like my brother, but Dora smuggled in an old EMP, and we fixed it up, made it more destructive, and bam. The City goes back to its roots. Pandemonium. Chaos."  
"Are you even from the City, Despoina?" Hecate asked, trying to delay her own death.  
"Good question, although my answer will surely disappoint. No, I'm not from the City, although I have always been within the clutches of its influence."  
"My Dora from one of the colonized moons. Atropos, right?"  
"Yes, sweetie, that's right. The only living beings there are my parents, now that I'm gone," Despoina continued. "We were the manufacturers of Olympian Eternity, but we've cut ourselves off from the City. My parents plan on dying there, where my father was born. Where my mother forced onto. I alone left, and I will make sure the City dies."  
"I didn't know anyone lived in the colonies," Hecate muttered.  
"No one does, darling. We're a well-kept secret, after all. The Olympians have long since stopped questioning where their Eternity comes from. But the colonies don't have technology advanced enough to be fully automated."  
"Please don't do this."  
"Give me one good reason, darling."  
Hecate had nothing. There was nothing good here, especially with Persephone dead or nearly dead.  
"Exposition, but only as the final curtain descends," Despoina says, an air of smugness in her voice. "How poetic."  
"It's a shame you can't make it to the curtain call," Prometheus's brother said, in the same tone a person might say "I'll see you later."  
A sharp pain shot through Hecate's body, starting from the spot in her back where Despoina's gun was, quickly expanding to her entire body.  
Before Hecate lost consciousness, she kicked backward. She made contact with Despoina's knee, probably breaking her leg. The last thing Hecate heard before dying was Despoina's scream of pain.  
No one would make it out of the City alive. Not even the ones who brought it crumbling down.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll admit that this is kind of info-dumpy, and that i was kind of reaching for some way to tie things up. But the colonies are only mentioned in passing in UDAD, and not mentioned at all in the fiction on the Mechs website, so i decided to utilize that.  
> I'm not entirely happy with this, honestly i just want to get the remainder of this fic out so i can move onto the next UDAD fic i've been working on. Yeah i've been hyperfixating on UDAD a lot lately..... I'll post the finale of this fic soon, and probably reveal what the next one will be.


	6. Lethe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The different ways the people die.

Eros sat at their wife's side, weeping. Psyche's body no longer moved, although they could see a spark of energy in her eyes. She was staring at their face, trying to ensure that they were the last thing she'd see.  
After all they went through for her, and all she went through for them… there was no need for Eros to put their feelings into words, and there was no way for Psyche to speak her mind now.

Pygmalion was pinned to the ground under his boyfriend's body. The somnambulist body he had gotten his love's brain into had short circuited during an intimate moment, leaving Pygmalion and Galatea trapped in the embrace. Galatea's eyes remained wide open, and though he could no longer express it, he thought that this wasn't such a bad way to die, staring at his lover's face and the world crashed down around them.  
Pygmalion wanted to scream. His lover was still as a statue once more, and he was stuck staring at a face that was exactly the way he had always wanted his boyfriend to look, and yet it was not quite right anymore. His missed his boyfriend's original face, imperfect as it was. So he closed his eyes and waited for death to come, although that wouldn't happen for several days, when he would finally succumb to starvation. Galatea's life would fade only hours before that.

Persephone's body lay on the ground, wires sparking. His brain no longer functioned, and the only one near enough to care was the guard dog Hades had forgotten to take when they left the planet behind them.

Demeter, for all her coldness, had no intention of letting the City fall without record of it. Aging too fast, she had run to the Acheron. Not fast enough, of course, to discover that her long-lost daughter had become the man she'd been investigating for the past decade.

Aphrodite died by her own hand. She'd seen what had happened to Demeter and Zeus and the other Olympians. She would keep herself beautiful. She wouldn't let the Sphinx infect her too. So she made some tea, mixed with some arsenic.

Ganymede had realized the end was coming long before any of the Olympians noticed, and he prepared to die in his own way. Over the many years that he'd been trapped in Don Zeus's immortal employ, he'd never dared to act up, but now he was ready to go out guns blazing. He grabbed a laser rifle some fool had left in Aphrodite's bedroom and went up to Zeus's palace. He began shooting wildly, defacing as much as the palace as he could before he could be stopped. When his ammo was spent, Zeus himself came and dragged him to his chambers. After about half an hour, Zeus was done with him, and snapped his neck in a single motion.

Meanwhile, in the house once belonging to Prometheus, Despoina screamed at her husband. "You're so useless! You just sat there and watched her attack me!"  
He shrugged. "Didn't occur to me, Dora."  
"Now there's no way I can get off this hellhole," she said, stifling another scream.  
"You got another laser in there?" her husband asked. "Could end your pain, or mine."  
Despoina threw the rifle at him. She didn't want to die, and she didn't care enough about him to put him out of his misery. And he was miserable. He hated the City, just like her, but he had long-since resigned himself to the fact that it was where he would eventually die.  
He caught the gun. "You really won't make the call yourself? Aren't you curious about what happens to those who die without being put into the Acheron?"  
"I couldn't care less."  
"Cool."  
And he lifted the gun, aimed carefully at her head.  
"Do it then," she snarled.  
He aimed upward suddenly, and shot. He shot and shot until the barrel was empty.  
"What a waste you are," Despoina muttered, too quietly for him to hear.  
But he'd hit all his marks perfectly, and the ceiling above her collapsed, crushing her in an instant.  
"There you go, Dora. You finally get to sleep."  
He would join her eventually, but for now he stared through the open door and watched. He saw what happened, but he didn't regret anything. This was the only way this kind of story can end. He saw that now, looking back on everything.  
Now he just waited as everyone died, one by one by one, until at last death came for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so the next installment of my UDAD stuff is a prequel to the others, even before UDAD happens. It'll focus on Ganymede, which is... going to be tough, since his story is steeped in abuse. I don't intend to write any smut, but it'll have sexual content in it, to an extent. I'll mostly avoid the topic, but I can't avoid it completely. Because of this, the fic about Ganymede will be written as a standalone. I don't expect anyone to read it if it makes them uncomfortable. I just really grew attached to my interpretation of Ganymede as I worked on this last chapter. I ended up cutting most of what I wrote about him here, but I still want to explore him as a character. So that's what's next.


End file.
